Thursday Sept. 18^th | Big 12 Room KS Union from 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

National Hispanic Heritage Month Speaker, Mary Mendoza presents, "Building Fences, Constructing Race: An Environmental History of the US-Mexico Border.”

Dr. Mendoza will explain the causes, development, and legacy of fence construction along the US southern border. At the core of her talk, she will expand upon how insects, pathogens, and other environmental threats seen as "Mexican" are ultimately central to the border control apparatus that we know today, and to the racialized anti-Mexican sentiment found in modern-day immigration debates. Her talk does include intersections between the Spanish-speaking people in the US and Latin America, and of course, the immigrant experience from Latin America.

Mary E. Mendoza is an Assistant Professor of History and Latino/a Studies at Penn State University.  Her current book project, Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens and People defied the U.S.-Mexico Border (UNC, 2026), explores the intersections between the natural and built environments along the boundary between the United States and Mexico. She is also the co-editor of Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, and Environmental History (Nebraska, 2025), an anthology on race and environment. She has received major grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Clements Center for Southwest Studies, the Huntington Library, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

The Department of History is extremely grateful to our generous sponsors: Sponsors: KU Center for American History, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Western History Association, Hall Center for Humanities, Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Department of Environmental Studies, Department of Sociology, Department of English, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Department of Museum Studies, Department of Political Science, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, School of Public Affairs & Administration